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March 22, 2006
The most interesting thing I've read this month
It was the opening sentence of Patrick McGrath's review, in the March 5 New York Times Book Review, of Kevin Brockmeier's new novel, "The Brief History of the Dead," and follows:
"Here is a novel with an intriguing premise: that humans are divided into three categories, comprising those who are still alive, those who have died but live on in the memories of the living, and those who are dead and forgotten."
What an interesting way of looking at the world.
As I think about it, I realize that I do occasionally think of some dead people — relatives, friends, classmates, ballplayers I enjoyed watching as a boy (many of whose autographs were my most precious possessions at the time); beyond those relatively few, though, most of the people I've had occasion to cross paths with while sporting my current wetware suit are entirely forgotten and thus might as well be in the third group as delineated by Brockmeier.
McGrath wrote that the novel takes place in a city populated by individuals in the second group: "... they're entirely sustained by the thoughts of people still living in the real world."
How is this different from virtual people in virtual gaming worlds?
Are they too not "entirely sustained by the thoughts of people still living in the real world?"
And let's take it a step farther: aren't the inhabitants of virtual worlds created "by the thoughts of people still living in the real world?"
Unless the game creator is dead.
The reviewer said the book is terrible apart from its superb premise.
Still, that premise is powerful and provocative enough for me to go ahead and take a flyer on the novel.
Are virtual worlds real if there's no one around to visit them?
If the world is a calculation and everyone drops dead and there's no one around to do the math, as it were, does the world disappear?
There are many who would say, "Absolutely."
Me, I think there's no more interesting question than that one.
March 22, 2006 at 04:01 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Doesn't matter. Within a couple of generations, everyone is forgotten, unless they are in the history books. I think we have a collective self. Jeffrey Dahlmer has no memory of what he did when alive, nor does Mother Teresa. They are the same. It is all one, and we are all one. We all become as fiction when dead as we no longer have awareness of self.
Posted by: riannan | Mar 29, 2006 8:56:37 PM
I too have thought about this very notion, often. Too often. Too often, lately. That those who die before us, when they die, take roughly half of each of our shared memories with them. And that we, when we die, take the rest. So what is worse, to have lost someone we remember, or to then be lost ourselves, and thus leave one less to remember them to the rest of the world? Memory is everything, and oddly, no-thing at all. It is the very stuff of us, and the stuff that dreams were made on.
Posted by: lisa schamess | Mar 28, 2006 10:18:09 PM
hmm. the earth will not last forever, and the odds of humanity surviving into even the next millenium must be astronomically slim, with the odds of course becoming exponentially longer as more millenia pass. i fail to see how this idea is comforting at all to those contemplating death; perhaps you will be remembered for a time, but we all wind up dead and forgotten eventually, even the most famous or notorious of us. i think the belief touched on by this premise is useful mainly to comfort the living when they think of dead loved ones. upon inspection, however, we cannot mistake the implication that, no matter whether and how well we remember these dear ones, eventually they will be forgotten by all, just as we ourselves will be. i must agree that the premise is too self-serving and short-sighted to be taken very seriously, just as is the old cliche many parents tell their children: "even though she is dead, fluffy is not gone. she remains with us in our memories, and so lives on as long as we remember what a nice cat she was."
Posted by: high-pitched noise | Mar 28, 2006 8:30:54 PM
cleary it is not about the deads investment in their remembrance-
it has to do with the living and our connection to the past, the rituals ,the idealization , the history -the need for meaning above and beyond our oun wee life. our heros -our fathers,mothers,things that should be remembered just because they were and to regail our children these
so they see that there is actually more than just right now
Posted by: mbpmbp2 | Mar 22, 2006 11:28:50 PM
I think being remembered when dead is an egoistic fantasy harbored solely by the living.
Seriously - the dead don't care whether their great grandchild remembered they used to make salt water taffy with said dead person 60 years ago. Either they're in heaven in bliss (or bored if you buy Edward O. Wilson's hypothesis, which to me seems perfctly logical) or too tormented in hell to think of anything but the devil poking his butt with a pitchfork or reincarnated as some German Barmaid - in which case they've no idea what salt water taffy is probably.
So yes. What was I saying? Dead people don't care. That living people want to think they don't is so much emotional claptrap to make ourselves "feel better".
Posted by: IB | Mar 22, 2006 7:33:37 PM
Cool illustration, too.
I just picked up and barely started "Stiff" by Mary Roach. First line of the introduction is "The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down, The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens and nothing is expected of you." A little later: "This book is about notable achievements made while dead. There are people long forgotten for their contributions while alive, but immortalized in the pages of books and journals."
I hope this book fulfills its anticipated promise. Your book, too.
Posted by: Riannan | Mar 22, 2006 5:28:50 PM
